


The Special Delight of Difference

by Sigridhr



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen, Meta, episode by episode analysis, feminist ranting and raving, keyboard smashing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigridhr/pseuds/Sigridhr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An episode-by-episode analysis of Star Trek, with special emphasis on the show's portrayal of women, thematic elements, and the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Man Trap

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a quote from Gene Roddenberry: _"Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins to not just tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in lifeforms."_

Given the age of ST:TOS and the glorious geekiness of its fans, I’m sure this has been done before – but I haven’t been able to track down and episode-by-episode analysis of the show that covered a lot of what I want to talk about, so I figured I might as well write one. 

Just a few quick things before I start:

I will probably come at this from a fairly feminist bent. I’m certainly interested in portrayals of women on the show, and how the show does or does not succeed on that front. I wanted to clarify, however, that, as much as I will be acknowledging the context that the show was created in (and its relative success on that account), I don’t see a problem with pointing out issues in the text that would have been considered ‘the norm’ or acceptable at the time. It’s clearly still a show that is watched in the present, and, based on the recent reboot films, a lot of my complaints haven’t changed much. 

Additionally, there will probably be a lot of discussion about thematic elements of the episodes, and the greater over-arching theme of the dialogue between emotion and logic that was deliberately created as the centrepiece of the show. I’ll probably also keyboard smash my way through the episodes, because I cannot watch them without wallowing in how absolutely adorable I find everyone. 

I highly encourage disagreement, and additions. If you think I’ve missed something, or totally misinterpreted something please drop me a line and I’ll amend/rebut accordingly. 

So, without further ado:

**The Man Trap**   
_I loved Nancy very much. Few women like my Nancy. She lives in my dreams. She walks and sings in them._

**Episode in Brief**  
We start with Kirk, McCoy and a soon-to-be deadshirt down on a deserty planet, as Kirk’s voiceover tells us that they’re here to check on a couple of archaeologists – one of whom is an ex that McCoy is still carrying a torch for named Nancy Crater. Kirk teases McCoy a bit about it, picking up a bunch of dry grass like a dork and joking that McCoy should be bringing flowers. 

We soon meet Nancy, who isn’t actually Nancy at all. She’s a salt-sucking creature who takes on a form suggested by the observer’s mind. McCoy sees her as a twenty-something, precisely as he remembered her. Kirk is a little less charitable, and Ensign Darnell is apparently thinking of some girl from – I shit you not – “Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet”. We also learn that McCoy’s nickname is apparently “Plum” as well as “Bones”, which strikes me as absolutely hysterical. Darnell is soon lured away and killed, while Nancy’s husband Bob Crater comes in and gets all crotchety with everybody telling them to fetch them some salt and then piss off. 

This is not very effective on account of Darnell being dead, and Kirk insists on sticking around to investigate. Nancy puts on a show of discovering the body, claiming she saw Darnell eat a poisonous plant and was too late to stop him. McCoy, however, sees a different Nancy Crater this time – older, the same as Kirk had seen her before – and this throws him for a loop. He’s about a lovestruck as Bob Crater is _totally not suspicious_ at all. 

Kirk tells him to get his shit together and figure out how Darnell died. Turns out he died from a sudden and total loss of salt – which is a total crazy random happenstance because both Nancy and Bob Crater’s favourite seasoning is salt. Kirk beams down with a couple of unlucky ensigns and questions Bob Crater, who is extremely recalcitrant. Nancy, meanwhile kills the ensigns, and, when Bob tries to lure her back using the same trick I use to get my cats to come home at night (with an equal lack of effect), she takes on the guise of the dead crewman Green and gets beamed back up to the ship. 

Once on the ship, creature!Green takes on a markedly more creepy approach, wordlessly stalking Yeoman Rand around and freaking out Sulu’s plants. Sadly, this is pretty much the only time we see Sulu’s hobbies on screen – save the fencing in _The Naked Time_ – but it’s a nice glimpse into his interests and his character. The creature then stalks Uhura, turning into a Swahili crewman of Uhura’s own imagining. Finally, after eating some poor, unfortunate and nameless crewman, it turns up in Dr McCoy’s room in the guise of Nancy and convinces him to down some sleeping pills. 

Kirk and Spock beam back down for some quality time, only to be shot at my Professor Crater who seems to be operating under the mistaken impression he’s going to somehow get out of this mess. For an archaeologist, he seems pretty a-OK with shooting the crap out of the ruins, but we get to see Kirk and Spock do some of the most adorable commando crawling, so, you know, there’s that. Kirk manages to stun Crater, who fills us all in on what’s been going on. The creature is, apparently, the last of its kind. It has killed Nancy, but he’s insistent they spare it, and talks about the buffalo having been driven to extinction on Earth. 

Back on the ship, Uhura, Rand and Sulu are searching for the creature, unaware that it’s now sporting a brand new McCoy suit. Kirk holds a staff meeting, and Crater refuses to identify the creature. Spock suggests some truth serum (which, really, should be used more often if they’ve got it), and the not-real McCoy, he, and Crater all head down to sickbay, where Spock gets a sever bonk on the head, and Crater gets a severe case of death.

Kirk then finds the creature in McCoy’s room, again in the guise of Nancy, trying to convince the real McCoy to protect her. He lures the creature with salt, but it manages to hypnotise him in preparation for eating him. Spock arrives in time to save the day, and attempts to get McCoy to shoot it by hitting Nancy repeatedly. McCoy finally sees the creature for what it really is and shoots it, and we learn that apparently the creature has been borrowing some of Khan’s futuristic fishnets. 

And, once again, the day is saved.

 

**Themes**

The obvious theme of this episode is extinction. It’s discussed explicitly with reference to the creature, and Bob Crater’s line about the buffalo. Kirk, too, at the end says he’s “thinking about the buffalo”. The dilemma lies between Kirk’s need for self-defence, to ensure the safety of his ship, and the creature’s right to survive. I do think that they don’t actually try to communicate with the creature in any way, and, since it’s demonstrated to be intelligent, I think they could have potentially saved it before it escalated to the point where killing it was necessary. 

Nevertheless, where this theme gets most interesting (at least for me) in in the relationship between the creature and Bob Crater – which is where it ties into the other main theme of this episode, which is identity and identity construction. Crater says that the two things the creature needs is salt and love, the second of which was clearly the reason why it left him alive. 

The title could, I think, be read to fit both these themes. First is the idea of “the Man Trap” as a man-made catastrophe that ultimately brings about tragedy through extinction. Star Trek has plenty of environmentalist themes (Star Trek IV: Save the Whales, anyone?), so I think it fits that the ‘trap’ is the one Crater is living in. As Kirk says, he “bleeds too much”, as he literally lives with the thing that killed his wife in order to preserve it. However, Kirk also touches on the other side of the coin – the creature’s role as a woman, and as a blank slate – in the same line:

> KIRK: You bleed too much, Crater. You're too pure and noble. Are you saving the last of its kind or has this become Crater's private heaven, here on this planet? This thing becomes wife, lover, best friend, wise man, fool, idol, slave. It isn't a bad life to have everyone in the universe at your beck and call, and you win all the arguments. 

We don’t actually see the creature express much of its own identity. In fact, we’re explicitly told that it pulls and creates its image from the minds of the people looking at it. This is supported by creature!Nancy knowing McCoy’s nickname “Plum”, which she could only have learned from his mind. So, when Crater says the creature requires love also, I think Kirk is bang on with his statement above. Because any love the creature receives is a kind of fabricated and hollow love, for the image of his dead wife. It’s idealized and based on a construction theof a person from his memory, rather than the creature or his wife themselves.

When we first meet the creature, it pulls three different images from Kirk, McCoy and Ensign Darnell’s minds. McCoy, still lovestruck and pining, sees her the way he wants to remember her – precisely as she was, and the creature responds very well to him. She likes him best, actually, saying “[he] has such strong feelings”. Kirk, on the other hand, sees a combination of what McCoy has described, and what he expects – a woman of middle age meeting Nancy’s description. 

Darnell, on the other hand, is interesting. The way the creature lures him away is a classic virgin/whore set-up, complete with McCoy’s idealized “good girl”, and their calling out of Darnell for equating her with a “bad girl”. The “bad girl” is, of course, highly sexualized, and uses that to pull him, like a siren, to his death. This is arguably another form of “strong feelings”, but not one the creature requires or feeds on, simply one it uses. 

But they’re both pedestals. McCoy’s is the romanticized and pure ‘lost love’, and Darnell’s an equivalent ‘lost lust’, who he clearly remembered well and strongly enough for the creature to use the memory in the construction of its identity. 

The other aspect of identity construction that I found really interesting was the way the creature’s ability to speak for itself and engage with the people around it convincingly depended on the identity it took on. Nancy was convincing and engaging as a person (and, honestly, at first a lot less suspicious than Bob Crater to Kirk and McCoy, given she didn’t come out demanding they leave). As crewman Green, however, it looses the ability to speak at all once it reaches the ship. 

Clearly it’s not related to being on the ship, because it speaks as Uhura’s crewman, Nancy and Dr McCoy while onboard, so it suggests to me that it has to do with the strength of the constructed identity in the minds of the viewers. We’re not given any clear idea of how well Rand and Sulu know crewman Green – certainly well enough to recognize by name, but if it’s not much more than that it seems possible to me that their unfamiliarity with him would give the creature little to work with when taking that persona on. 

Similarly, as Dr McCoy there is a pronounced difference in the way it speaks – much more slowly, and in simpler sentences – than the way McCoy himself speaks. The creature doesn’t seem fully animate until we see it again as Nancy, speaking to Dr McCoy, who, as we know has a complete and emotionally resonant construction of her identity in the forefront of his mind. 

It strikes me as sad, honestly, because when Crater says the creature requires ‘love’, the sort of love that it is getting is hollow. The creature is literally molding itself to the perceptions and expectations of others. This, too, is a “Man Trap”. Beyond the trap that Darnell and McCoy fall into – that is, wanting a woman badly enough they’re willing to believe it is her when it isn’t – the construction of expected identities of others is a trap in and of itself. McCoy’s memories of Nancy are _not_ Nancy any more than Bob Crater’s are – which is why his insistence that “Nancy understood” has always seemed like rationalization rather than the strict truth to me, but I have no proof of that. 

We have few indications of any underlying identity to the creature, save the hand gesture (resting the knuckle of their forefinger to their lips) that each of the actors playing the creature do, and the two moments the creature speaks up for itself. First, when, as McCoy it argues for its own intelligence and right to life, and second when it pleads with McCoy to spare it. 

In the first of these, it describes itself as simply “trying to survive using its natural ability to take other forms”, a sentiment quickly echoed and expanded upon by Professor Crater. However, the argument is quickly taken over by Crater, who says more in the creature’s defense than the creature does itself. This comes at the same time as his statement: “I loved Nancy very much. Few women like my Nancy. She lives in my dreams. She walks and sings in them” and Kirk’s accusation that he has created his own “private heaven”. Even as he defends the creature, he’s constructing an identity for it, speaking for it and on its behalf. 

Which brings me back to Crater’s argument and the theme of extinction:

> CRATER: They needed salt to stay alive. There was no more salt. It's the last one. The buffalo. There is no difference.    
> KIRK: There's one, Professor. Your creature is killing my people.

In both cases they are extinctions caused by humans. In both cases they are caused by putting human needs above the needs of others. Even here, where Crater defends the creature on the basis of its intelligence and its right to life, he cannot divorce it from the constructed identity he puts upon it, nor does he let it speak for itself. That, I think, is the Man Trap.

 

**Other Smaller Things of Note**

Uhura’s lonely flirting with Spock is both hilarious and adorable. In fact, Uhura in this episode is wonderful as always – her retort to the creature “so, naturally when I’m lonely, I think of _you_ ” is just pitch perfect and highlights how totally underused Nichelle Nichols was as an actress on this show. 

This episode also has the first “dead, Jim” of the series, and Sulu’s line about “The Great Bird of the Galaxy”, which was picked up as a nickname for Gene Roddenberry after he wrote it. 

However, one of my favourite things about this episode is the friendship we get to see between McCoy and Kirk. A lot of ink has been spilled about how wonderful the Kirk-Spock dynamic is that I think it sometimes sweeps under the rug the gloriousness of Kirk and McCoy’s friendship. This is the only episode I can recall where McCoy refers to Kirk as “sir” the way he does here after Kirk rebukes him, and their exchange, contrite and forgiving is wonderful:

> MCCOY: I thought it was, sir. Another error on my part.    
> KIRK: I'm not counting them, Bones. Are you in the mood for an apology?    
> MCCOY: Oh, forget it. I probably was mooning over her. I should have been thinking about my job. 

It’s also got a quick and fascinating little line: “You could learn something from Mister Spock, Doctor. Stop thinking with your glands.” If my memory serves this is the only time Kirk explicitly tells McCoy to be more like Spock, but it certainly does effectively highlight their comparative strengths and failings. Spock is extremely good procedurally in a crisis. He keeps a level head, almost always has options (at least until a more outside-the-box approach is required, which is usually where Kirk steps in, Fizzbin and Corbomite spring immediately to mind), and is extremely efficient. Returing back to the ship and sweeping the area with sensors is, as Kirk points out, the fastest and most efficient way to find Nancy, but McCoy is much too emotionally involved to be efficient at this point.

The flip side is, of course, that McCoy’s strengths lie in dealing with people, a skill Spock has tremendous difficulty with, which is highlighted in his approach to Uhura. He is either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to engage in the conversation she’s trying to start up. And, bless Nimoy’s tremendous acting skills, after she accuses him of not caring that someone has died, it’s very clear from the way his tone changes that he _does_ care, but that people on the ship have as much difficulty reading him as he does reading them. This is actually a failing for a commander, (which gets highlighted at length in _The Galileo Seven_ ). Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with it, but when you are commanding four hundred people in tense situations you need to be able to assess and meet their emotional needs in order to keep them calm and on-task. This is traditionally one of Spock’s weakest points, but does actually improve over the course of the series. It’s also McCoy’s strongest.


	2. Charlie X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, this chapter includes discussion of rape culture. If that sort of discussion is going to be triggery or emotionally draining, you may wish to give this one a miss. 
> 
> As always, please drop me a line if you think I've missed/misinterpreted something. :)

**Charlie X**

_"I loved her, but she wasn't nice at all."_

* * *

I didn’t remember liking this episode very much, honestly, before I re-watched it. But now that I have, I’m really not sure why because this episode is kind of awesome.

This episode is a not-very-thinly veiled take on puberty. So far, so obvious, but there are quite a few things about Charlie (and his relationship with Rand and with Kirk) that I find really interesting.

Okay, so, Charlie explicitly has two things he wants, and they’re both related: he wants acceptance from peers and adults, and he wants love, and, as Kirk points out, he “wants, he needs, nothing ever happens fast enough.” This, in itself, is, as McCoy points out, pretty normal for most adolescents. What makes Charlie different, however, is how utterly unchecked and unempathetic he is about everything he does.

It’s clear Charlie’s image is important to him from the get-go – he wants to impress Kirk and to be liked. That’s why he forces the Captain of the Antares to praise him so effusively, and why he tries to extract a childish promise from Dr McCoy that they’ll like him. Then, after he sees Yeoman Rand, the desire to be liked takes on a sharper, more specific focus. I find it telling that the first thing he says is “is that a girl?” as if his attraction is based solely upon an equation in his mind that he is male and she is female, so he should want to take her clothes off. I don’t doubt that he’s honestly attracted to her, but I think the result would have been the same if it had been literally any other woman – which is important. Aside from the fact that he seems to know (without her mentioning) her favourite perfume, he expresses no interest in her personality, her duties or anything about her, aside from her physical aspects. He uses photographs of her, and talks about how she smells, but all of his conversations with her are about how he feels, and what he wants.

It does bother me a little that Yeoman Rand doesn’t speak up for herself much, and uses Kirk as a proxy. One could argue that that was a feature of the times, but I honestly think it’s just a feature of rape culture in general. She’s insistent on letting him down gently (going so far as to explicitly say so to Kirk), and she’s unwilling to give much of a firm ‘no’ to him at all when she’s clearly uncomfortable. Her offer to meet him in the rec room is made clearly out of obligation to him after he gives her the gift – he’s pushy, he won’t let her go without a full acknowledgement of the gift to his satisfaction, and he pushes her into politely feeling like she needs to reciprocate.

The scene in the rec room is really interesting to me for a lot of reasons. Firstly, it’s one of the few times we see genuine female friendships on the ship – Janice and Uhura seem to spend their off hours together being adorable and, unsurprisingly, the show does tend to lack female friendships. But it also shows that Spock, surprisingly, spends his off hours in the rec room as well. It’s a degree of casual socialisation that suggests he does at least attempt, or wish to be, integrated more fully with the crew. And he’s very patient with Uhura’s teasing song, and, in fact, encourages it in the first place.

Which brings me to the content of the song because it is, to steal a phrase, _fascinating_. I’ll quote it here in full:

 

>   
>  UHURA: Oh, on the starship Enterprise  
>  There's someone who's in Satan's guise  
>  Whose devil ears and devil eyes  
>  Could rip your heart from you.  
>  At first, his look could hypnotize  
>  And then his touch would barbarize  
>  His alien love could victimize  
>  And rip your heart from you.  
>  And that's why female astronauts,  
>  Oh, very female astronauts  
>  Wait terrified and overwrought  
>  To find what he will do.  
>  Oh, girls in space, be wary, be wary, be wary,  
>  Girls in space, be wary.  
>  We know not what he'll do.  
> 
> RAND: One more time!  
> 
> UHURA: (singing) Now from a planet out in space, there comes a lad, not commonplace.  
>  A-seeking out his first embrace.  
>  He's saving it for you. [She looks at Rand]  
>  Oh, Charlie's our new darling, our darling, our darling.  
>  Charlie's our new darling.  
>  We know not what he'll do.

I’ll admit, as much as I want to climb Spock like a tree, the idea of describing him with the words “his alien love could victimize” strikes me as absolutely hysterical. The song does two things, I think. First, it highlights both Charlie and Spock as outsiders on the ship. They both have human roots, but grew up in alien environments and (though we don’t know it yet) both _are_ alien in part (I’m counting whatever was done to Charlie to give him his powers as having altered his fundamental makeup). In both cases Uhura ends with the “we know not what he’ll do”, othering Spock and Charlie as somehow exotic and dangerous on account of their difference.

But it also casts Spock as the mature seducer, and Charlie as the awkward, fumbling first-time lover. Spock is more passive – his gaze hypnotizes, his ‘devil ears’ and ‘devil eyes’ could ‘rip your heart from you’, but it implies an allure that Spock exudes naturally that is dangerous to all the female astronauts (and viewers at home!). He’s also devastatingly effective, and Charlie is standing awkwardly the whole time near the girl he wants to impress as Uhura talks up Spock’s seductive ears, making a very poor comparison. Charlie is active – “he’s seeking out his first embrace”, he goes to the women not the other way around. Uhura also explicitly refers to him as a ‘lad’, putting his youth in stark contrast with Spock’s maturity.

Additionally, there’s the obvious contrast in that Spock is the height of restraint, operating (usually) based on purely rational decisions, whereas Charlie is a maelstrom of unrestrained emotion. They are also both capable of overpowering the crew, Spock’s physical strength makes him a formidable force if he should choose to use it, and Charlie’s power obviously offers him a similar (and greater) capability. Hence they’re both potentially dangerous (and are described as such – “we know not what he’ll do”).

It seems a bit odd to me to cast Spock in the role of seducer. Certainly the producers were aware that he was drawing a bit of attention, so that may very well have been part of it, but I think in terms of in-universe reasons there are a couple. First, that the women of the Enterprise, like the housewives of America, all have secret crushes on Spock. We know for sure Chapel does, and it’s possible Uhura might have something of a thing too. It’s very possibly as well meant as a comment on the perceived erotic nature of exoticism – Uhura certainly highlights all of his seductive qualities as being explicitly “alien” in nature.

But, if one is so inclined (which I am a little), you could also read it as a parallel between Charlie and Rand, and Kirk and Spock. (Bear with me). Rand uses Kirk as a proxy throughout most of the episode. In fact, they were initially meant to become close friends and confidants, and, as his personal Yeoman, their characters are reasonably well linked. The parallel between Charlie and Spock I’ve already outlined above. I don’t necessarily read this as being romantic in both cases, though I think you could. Uhura’s ending line for both of them “we know not what he’ll do” may be applicable to the majority of people on the ship who see Spock and Charlie as an “other”, but both Rand and Kirk are highly adept and reading and understanding Charlie and Spock, respectively. Kirk on more occasions than I have time to go into demonstrates an awareness of Spock’s needs, and an ability to interpret his statements, that the rest of his crew seems to often lack. Rand, similarly, while she may not be aware of Charlie’s powers, seems to see more clearly than anyone else where Charlie’s interest in her is heading, and what Charlie really is. This is clear, I think, the way she tries to gently guide his actions, and the way she uses Kirk as a proxy.

And what is Charlie? Charlie’s a rapist, and a Nice Guy.

His speech to Janice when he’s introduced to Tina (the 17 year-old yeoman) is pretty illuminating about what he actually thinks about her. He says about Tina that she’s “just a girl”, but Janice he says: “You smell like a girl. All the other girls on the ship they, they look just like Tina. You're the only one who looks like you.” He then gives a very creepy speech about wanting somebody and wanting to be with somebody. But this is a direct development from his first line on seeing Janice, “is that a girl?” Now Janice is the only girl with any identity at all for him, the rest are interchangeable. He’s not seeing _people_ at all, instead he’s lumping them into a group as things.

It’s also really telling that when, later in the episode, he storms through the halls using his powers against people, the only victims of physical mutilation we see on screen are women. There’s the young woman he makes old, Tina who he turns into a lizard, another woman who loses her face (and, though she was speaking with male crewmen, we don’t see them). He pushes his way physically through a group of men, but doesn’t harm them. His anger, then, seems targeted specifically at all those inter-changeable “girls” who look the same to him.

 

I don’t always get behind Kirk’s speeches on women, but this one is pretty glorious:

 

>   
>  CHARLIE: What if you care for someone? What do you do?  
> 
> KIRK: You go slow. You be gentle. I mean, it's not a one-way street, you know, how you feel and that's all. It's how the girl feels, too. Don't press, Charlie. If the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know it. Do you understand?  
> 
> CHARLIE: You don't think Janice… You. She could love me!  
> 
> KIRK: She's not the girl, Charlie. The years are wrong, for one thing, and there are other things.  
> 
> CHARLIE: She can.
> 
> KIRK: No, Charlie.  
> 
> CHARLIE: She is.  
> 
> KIRK: No. 
> 
> CHARLIE: But if I did what you said! If I was gentle!  
> 
> KIRK: Charlie, there are a million things in this universe you can have and there are a million things you can't have. It's no fun facing that, but that's the way things are.

Charlie is, in effect, a Nice Guy. He bought her a present, so he expects something in return. He goes slow, he expects her to submit. Kirk spells it out for him, that if the girl feels nothing than she’s not obligated to, but Charlie isn’t very good at taking no for an answer. After all, he bought her a gift. She should be “nice.”

The first time we honestly see Janice stand up entirely for herself is when Charlie breaks into her quarters. She shuts him down politely when he slaps her, but redirects him to the captain rather than explaining herself why his action was inappropriate. She gets Kirk to give him the talk, tries to distract him with Tina, and is unfailingly polite rather than putting him off directly. Then, the first time she says no, he destroys her. Charlie’s argument about why he made the guy in the rec room who laughed at him disappear is “I didn’t mean to do that. He made me do it.” He employs the same tactic with Janice: “I loved her, but she wasn’t nice at all.” She’s obligated to be nice, because he wants her.

It’s the same argument in regards to Kirk and the ship, just without the sexual component. He tried to get them to like him, so they ought to.

The episode finishes by literally saying that these Nice Guys have no place in society. Literally, Charlie is deemed unfit for rehabilitation or life among humans. It’s a damning indictment on the idea that women should be obligated to be interested in a man just because a man expresses an interest in them. It highlights the learned passivity of women, and the danger women perceive in standing up and saying no for themselves. In short, the whole thing reads to me like one big fuck you to rape culture and I have no idea why I didn’t love the crap out of it before now.

Also, because this didn’t fit in anywhere else, McCoy and Spock arguing about Charlie’s ability to survive on his own is absolutely adorable. The way they talk over each other, and Spock’s “are you speaking logically, or emotionally?” absolutely kill me every time. It’s certainly telling, as well, that it is initially only Spock, who, as an outsider, is suspicious of Charlie. McCoy and Kirk see him as too young and innocent, Kirk is initially very dismissive of the fact that Charlie quipped that the Antares “wasn’t very well constructed” before they knew it had been destroyed. McCoy and Kirk are too constrained by the impressions of Charlie as a child and an innocent the rationally evaluate the facts.


End file.
